Abstract—In recent years, in spite of being legally prohibited, formaldehyde is reported to be widely used as a food preservative to increase the shelf life of fruits and fishes in tropical countries. The hot and humid weather of the tropical countries tends to quickly deteriorate fruits, vegetables, fishes, meat and other food items. Formaldehyde is detrimental to human health and reported as a human carcinogenic. To prohibit formaldehyde application in foods, the regulatory bodies often conduct on the spot analytical tests to detect artificially added formaldehyde in food items. However, formaldehyde is ubiquitous in the environment and is present in many animal and plant species as a product of their normal metabolism. Formaldehyde can be found naturally in food items including fruits, vegetables, meats, marine fishes and crustaceans. The formation and concentration of natural occurring formaldehyde may vary according to food types and conditions. The naturally occurring formaldehyde may interfere in the detection of artificially added formaldehyde in foods. It is therefore important to study the concentration and formation mechanism of naturally occurring formaldehyde in food items. The objective of this study is to determine naturally occurring formaldehyde levels in different fruits, vegetables and (cow) milk samples. In addition, time dynamic behavior of the formation of endogenous formaldehyde content in food sample (banana sample; AAB genome of Musa Spp.) was studied in this study.
 

Index Terms—formaldehyde, methylated compounds, cancer Risk, formation dynamics

Cite: Farrhin Nowshad, Md N. Islam, and Mohidus S. Khan, "Analysis of the Concentration and Formation Behavior of Naturally Occurring Formaldehyde Content in Food," International Journal of Food Engineering, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 71-75, March 2018. doi: 10.18178/ijfe.4.1.71-75